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A few weeks ago I was sitting at home while the kids were at school and feeling kind of depressed. Part of the reason was the inability to go anywhere or do much, but it was hitting me particularly hard that day (as opposed to the previous few weeks, although not much had changed), and I thought maybe there was something in particular I was missing. I couldn’t figure out what, though.

Having been raised as a good Mormon girl, I decided to start trying to figure out the answer using some of those standard Sunday School responses. Not because I think they’re a cure-all, but because they were mostly things I could do, I figured it wouldn’t hurt, and I had to start somewhere. So I started with prayer, and then moved on to scripture study. Neither were bad, but neither did anything to get me out of my funk, either. After reading about a chapter in my scriptures I thought that maybe reading some of my favorite GC talks would be more helpful. I started perusing some of President Uchtdorf’s talks (because he’s my favorite), and a couple of talks in something he said (no, I don’t remember what, or which talk) made me realize what I’d been missing. Service. Continue reading →

I spent many hours today listening to General Conference. As is usual for me, I was especially touched by President Uchtdorf’s talks. A couple of his comments, combined with events in Salt Lake City tonight, coalesced to form the thoughts in this post.

As anyone who reads Mormon blogs, or Mormon-related news of any sort, is no doubt aware, many women (and some men) came together in Salt Lake City tonight and asked to be admitted into the Priesthood session of General Conference. The group that organized the action is called Ordain Women, and their whole purpose is to call upon the leadership of the LDS Church to ordain women to the Priesthood alongside men. Many of these women have great faith that this is something that will happen, even though it hasn’t yet.

My husband and I are working on adopting, which is a large part of why I’ve been mostly absent here for the last year. I wrote this post last night on our adoption blog, but I thought it might generate some good discussion here, and go along nicely with some of the recent posts, so I’m cross-posting it.

Anyone who knows me know that I’m a pretty honest person, and I don’t sugarcoat things. Especially when it comes to my kids and mothering. In fact, this blog is probably about the least honest I’ve been, and even here I don’t feel like I’ve been at all dishonest, I just don’t have nearly enough whiny posts up for you to realize how whiny I can be in real life. That’s probably okay. A little less whining is good for me, and you probably appreciate not hearing so much of it. I know it grates on my nerves when my kids do it, so I really ought to be setting a better example.

But that’s not really why I’ve avoided my tendencies toward whininess here. (What do they mean, whininess isn’t a word? It totally is.) I’ve avoided it here because for the first time in a very long time people are judging me and I care what they think. Continue reading →

As I contemplated what to write about today, unlike past years, nothing immediately sprang to mind. Overall I think that’s a great thing. Life, even with autism, is more settled these days. We have routines and plans, and real communication, and things are pretty good.

Don’t get me wrong — life with Spencer is far from “normal”. My almost-3yo talks better than my 6yo does. If I have to choose one hand to hold in a busy parking lot or to cross a street, it’s that of my oldest child. Nearly everything in the house ends up dipped in water at one point or another, and that includes electronics. I’m trying to potty-train 3 children at once, and with the oldest I’ve probably washed out 5 or 6 times more poopy underwear than most parents do while potty training 10 children. Waiting in a line is like yanking teeth out with my bare hands.

Our blog is a little slow lately, and I’m feeling a little bad about that, and like I should do something about it. I have a number of post drafts in-progress, but none that are currently interesting enough to me to be worth the energy to finish them. So I thought I would approach our lovely readers. Are there any subjects that you’ve always wanted to discuss? Anything you wish we had a post on? Anything that’s currently on your mind that you wish there was a current post about? I’m taking requests. I won’t guarantee anything (since that’s practically a guarantee that I won’t manage to do it), but if you want to see a post on a particular subject and I can come up with something quasi-intelligent to say on the matter, I’ll try to do it. So, fire away. I aim to please.

While I don’t hold with the idea that you can magically change yourself and your habits by setting goals as New Year’s rolls around, I still find it useful to occasionally stop and look at how I’m doing in various areas of my life, and try to figure out how I can improve. New Year’s and my birthday (which happens to fall in July) always work out to be good times to re-evaluate and try to change some things, and this year is no different.

I set some goals last year, like I do every year, and (as in most years) I achieved some and didn’t achieve others. I’m okay with that — my general philosophy is that I’ll never be perfect, but better is always good. Since I didn’t get as far as I wanted to on some of my goals last year, I decided I should try something different to help motivate me this year, and I had a brilliant idea — a spreadsheet. (I know, it doesn’t sound that brilliant, but really, it was. For me at least.) Continue reading →

You know how people always joke about their bodies falling apart when they hit milestone years? Well, now I know why. It’s totally true. (Okay, not really — if I really had to pick a point when my body failed me it would be when I got CFS, which was when I was 16. Still, I find this situation ironic.)

I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago to get general blood tests done so I could save money on my insurance next year. Most of the tests came back normal, but one test didn’t — my HgA1c level was high. For those of you not in the know (I wasn’t) this indicates that my blood sugar over the last few months has been high. Continue reading →

Not Ophelia put up the text of President Benson’s 1987 talk about women not working outside the home over at FMH today. I had some thoughts after reading it, and I decided they were long and involved enough (and a little off-topic enough) that it would be better to put them up here as their own post. But they’re a reaction to the talk, so go read (or at least skim) it first.

While I always knew about this talk, I don’t recall ever being taught it much (though it’s possible I simply blew it off if/when it was taught and that’s why I don’t remember it), luckily. And I’m very grateful that my mother (who is very faithful, orthodox, conservative, and was always a SAHM mom) not only didn’t teach it, but didn’t listen to it. Or rather, that she didn’t let it keep her from making the choices that she thought were best for herself and her family. Continue reading →

I decided to pull this draft out because it was voted for — twice! — as one people would like to see finished. It was the only one of mine voted for (not too surprising, since my drafts make up about 1% of the total drafts), and I haven’t posted anything in a while, so I figured I should not only blog something again, but listen to the opinions of our commenters. So here you go. (Also, it was started a long time ago, but what was already there still applies.)

I’ve been reading this thread over on FMH. It had me thinking about presiding in my own marriage, and since I didn’t want to threadjack (and since the blog has been a little dead lately), I decided to post my thoughts here. Continue reading →

This is a repost of a post I did for FMH‘s A Day in the Life series. I’m resurrecting it now because my little sister recently had her second baby and is feeling overwhelmed. Hopefully this will help her realize that she’s at least doing better than I managed at the same time. Also, I hope to follow this up by finishing a post I started when the second was about a year old and things were much more under control, so look for that soon.

I’m a SAHM with a BA in anthropology and a minor in computer science. I have a 21-mo-old and a 3-mo-old (both boys). I write, and hope someday to publish a book, but not for a while at the rate I’m going.

I wanted to talk about this during the Prop 8 fervor, but didn’t quite have the energy. With the recent ruling in Iowa going into effect, I thought this was a good time to bring it up again. My friend John already wrote an awesome note stating my feelings on the matter better than I could, so (with his permission) I am reposting it here.Continue reading →

I’ve been wanting to put this post up for a while. The second annual World Autism Day gave me the impetus I needed to actually finish and publish it.

A while ago I was in the waiting room of a local children’s clinic, waiting for my son’s doctor’s appointment. There was another boy there with his parents and his grandmother. He was probably about 12, and while I’m not sure what exactly was wrong with him, he had some obvious developmental delays. I watched as his grandmother took him outside in the small garden adjoining the waiting room, and the boy expressed obvious delight in nature and the outdoors. When he came back inside he came up behind me and gave me a hug. It surprised me at first (I didn’t realize he’d come up behind me), but then I turned around, gave him a big smile, and said, “Hello.” He smiled back. His grandmother immediately rushed into a defensive explanation of him and his behavior. I just smiled and said, “I know.” Continue reading →

I’m feeling a little guilty because no one has posted anything here for a while (and our last post was even a guest post — thanks Beatrice!). But I’m also pretty much incapable of higher thought function at the moment, so you get to read some more random nothingness. There has recently been a fad on facebook where you post 25 random facts about yourself. I joined in, mostly because I had enjoyed reading what other people wrote so much. I thought I would share my list with you as well, and I would love to get to know all of you better by hearing some random facts about your life. Continue reading →

Kevin had a nice post at BCC not long ago on losing weight. It is, after all the time of year for buckling down and deciding that this time, we’re going to do those hard things that we’ve been struggling with. While I’m fairly happy with my weight right now (I’m not quite where I want to be, but I’m steadily losing baby weight), it reminded me of a related goal I have this year: to be healthier. Continue reading →

I’ve been wanting to write the last couple of days, but I’ve been kind of stuck with my current writing project. In my attempt to either work through this or avoid it (you pick), I’ve come up with some blog posts. They’ve all been fairly random, especially in regards to what we usually talk about around here, so most of them haven’t actually been posted (actually, most of them have only been written in my head at this point). But despite the fact that I don’t want to completely bury our blog in random and off the wall posts, I still do post some of them. Like my last post, which was even entitled Complete Randomness. Or the post about a fly in my bedroom.

I realized that to post such things I must feel pretty comfortable here. At home. And I do. It got me thinking about where I feel at home, and where I don’t, and ways that I can tell. Continue reading →

I haven’t blogged in a while, and I’m feeling a little guilty about it. (This is not to suggest that my fellow bloggers are in any way making me feel guilty. If you hadn’t figured it out, we’re kind of laid back about posting around here. No, the guilt is entirely self-induced.) The thing is, I really don’t have anything interesting to blog about. Not even anything uninteresting that I can make an entire post out of. Because, well, posts require thought (semi-coherent ones do, at least), and I’m currently incapable of thought. (This is a fairly common occurrence, what with 3 kids 3 and under.)

So, I’m now going to string together some completely random thoughts and call them a blog post.Continue reading →

Are there incidents that dramatically shaped your approach to nurturing or caregiving?

I wanted to answer these questions, but I didn’t really want to start a vaccine debate (which can get ugly) on someone else’s site, so I decided to post my response here.

The biggest thing that has contributed to and changed my parenting style and philosophies has been my oldest son’s autism. The biggest thing that it has taught me is to be aware of what is going on with my children and with their bodies. It has also taught me that things that are good for many kids are not necessarily good for my kids. Continue reading →

…and I want it to leave. I can think of two possible ways to get rid of it.

A) Turn off the light.

B) Kill it.

A is problematic because I would feel guilty about turning the light back on, since my husband is in bed asleep next to me. And I can’t actually go to bed yet because I have to switch the wash so my son can have a clean shirt for pictures at preschool tomorrow.

B is problematic because, well, my fly-killing skills are just not that good. I’d definitely have to go downstairs and get the flyswatter (and then I’d have to go back down and put it away, and who really wants to run the stairs a couple of extra times, especially in the middle of the night?). Even then, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be able to kill it.

I know we’ve talked about this subject before, but since I’m currently debating with myself over it, I decided to bring it up again and let the rest of you debate with me.

I’m currently the leader of the wolf den in cub scouts (with another woman) and the teacher of the 6-7yo primary class (with my husband). I hate it. I’ve been doing them both about 9 months, and I’ve hated them pretty much the whole time. I guess the primary class was okay for two or three weeks, but that’s about it. I knew I wouldn’t like the callings when I accepted them, but I’m a big believer in accepting any and all callings, so I did. Continue reading →